1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method of using a ten-key keypad mounted on a portable telephone, a remote controller of a car navigation system, or the like.
The present application claims priority from Japanese Application No. 2001-255087, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference for all purposes.
2. Description of the Related Art
Some of portable telephones becoming increasingly commonplace in recent years have a service function for connecting with the Internet and are capable of displaying a Web page or a map image for a navigation system on their display.
When such a portable telephone is designed to include, on an operation panel, an arrangement of image-operation keys for changing display on a screen, such as a scroll key for horizontally or vertically scrolling a Web page or map image data on the display, a setting key for setting the scale of a map image, and the like, this design has problems of the increasing difficulty of the arrangement of the image operation keys in conjunction with progressive reduction in size of the portable telephone, and of greater complication in the operability of the image operation keys thus arranged.
The remote controller of a car navigation system is typically provided with a scroll key for scrolling a map image as well as a variety of operation keys for changing a screen. As the remote controller has gradually decreased in size and the number of available functions has increased in recent years, a problem has arisen of the increasing difficulty of the arrangement of the operation keys and the like on the remote controller and of the greater complication in operability as in the case of the portable telephone.
Likewise, other types of such compact electronic apparatus needing keys for operating a screen have similar problems.